Eger, Hungary 9/27-9/28

So that Budapest was not our only destination in Hungary we decided to stop by Eger on our way to Romania.  Eger is a small town in the wine country, and has the usual sites – churches, parks, castle… When we got to Eger we did not have a place to stay, however the night before we emailed one of the pensions that was recommended by the book.  The answer to the email did not arrive in time, and we headed out to that pension anyway.  Luckily the taxis there cost next to nothing.  Unfortunately the pension was sold out.  Which was super odd – it was a Tuesday during an offseason.   We guessed that there was some family reunion going on.   But as it turned out that particular part of the street was lined with different private pensions, and the lady who owned this place took us by the hand to another place 100 yards away that had a room.  Having unloaded the bags we set out to get some food, and see the town.  We had a few hours to do so.  Sometime during the meal it became apparent that Julie was not feeling well, so we went back to our room to chill for a bit.  A bit turned into a few hours after which Julie felt better; the castle and the churches however were closed by then, so we looked at them from the outside.  But having seen quite a number of churches, and castles we were OK with it.  I think it was Fooks who introduced me to the acronym AFC?

From 2011.09.28 Eger

Before we went to Eger we made sure that we can reach our next destination, Cluj-Napoca from Eger without coming back to Budapest.  So I played travel agent, and found a good train connection using Hungarian railroad website.  The next morning when we went to the train station to catch our train we had this itinerary saved on Julie’s phone, so we could show it at the ticket counter, and not worry that they’ll sell us something else.  As we predicted, as soon as we said we were going to Cluj-Napoca the lady at the ticket office offered us a connection via Budapest; but we were prepared, and told her exactly the route we wanted to take: Eger - Tsizafured – Karcag – Cluj-Napoca complete with arrival and departure times.  She appeared surprised by our intimate knowledge of the Hungarian train system, because we appeared to know more than she did.  You see, her particular office in Eger doesn’t use computers.  I think I spotted one there, but I’m not sure what they use it for.  For the next 20 minutes (we had about 30 until the train’s departure) she was trying to figure out the 3 tickets (our itinerary had 2 train changes), she was going through different books to find out how much to charge us for each.  I’ll give her that we did not make it simpler by not having enough local money, so she had to figure out the price for 2 smaller legs of our journey in local currency, and the last leg in euro.  The line behind us grew from 0 to about 20 passengers by the time we were done.  At one point I even asked them if anyone was willing to exchange a few Euro or US Dollars at a favorable rate.  Oh, did I mention that we used sign language to communicate with ticket lady?  Her English was as good as my French.

Once we got our tickets (2 hand written and one printed) we were on the first train and we were very excited that we made it.   Our first realization why she was surprised to see our proposed itinerary came when we unloaded at our first change station.  It was tiny, and shall we say, not touristy at all.  We had about 20 minutes until our next train, so after a thorough 30 seconds walk through the station we set down to wait for it.  That’s when I saw that the sole wagon that’s standing in front of us is in fact our train.

From 2011.09.28 Eger

In Karcag all we had to do was catch the passing Budapest - Cluj-Napoca train.  Unfortunately it was hard to do because there were no numbered platforms that would tell us which one was ours, instead all trains we saw happened to use the same one, would stop for less than a minute, and be on their way.  So when yet another train arrived within a minute of our scheduled departure time we had little time for deliberation; I got hold of one of the “officials” at the station, showed him my ticket, pointed at the train, and nodded in question “Is this the right train”, he pointed back at it, and nodded; so we boarded that train within the allocated minute.  The conductor on the train was less enthusiastic when he looked at the tickets, and in perfect Hungarian explained that we should do something.  We spent the next few minutes trying to figure out which train we boarded, and where it’s best for us to disembark.  We were successful in figuring out the answer to the first question, but we still did not know when to get off.  So we rolled the dice, and decided to exit at the next stop.  Having jumped off the train we immediately caught by the hand this station’s official, and asked him what he thought of our ticket, and whether that train was going to stop at this station.  He pointed to the direction of the station building and nodded.  We took it as a good sign, and did not jump back on the train.  Once in the station we made sure that yes, the train by this number was going to stop by, and we still had 10 minutes until its arrival.  So that was that, we made it without any more difficulties to Cluj-Napoca and to the hostel.  At least that part was easy…